Barton, K. E., & Huynh, H. (2000, April). Patterns of errors made on a reading test with oral reading administration . Annual meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), New Orleans, LA, United States.

All students were read the test by a reader (read-aloud), by an audio recording operated by either a test administrator or by the student, or by a video recording of a signed administration for students with hearing impairments. All test directions, items, and answer choices were read (or signed) to the students.

High school students with physical (91), emotional (125), and learning disabilities (1902), students with intellectual disabilities (438), and 368 students with no disability were included in the study. The physical disability category included students with hearing, orthopedic, vision, and language impairments. All students had completed the South Carolina Basic Skills Assessment Program (BSAP) High School Examination of Reading, Oral Accommodation form. Of the total sample, 87% of the students were students with disabilities. 36% of the students were female, and 64% were male. Although the dataset originally included 9 Asian, 1674 African American, 12 Hispanic, 15 Indian, and 1289 white students, the Asian, Hispanic, and Indian students were deleted from the analysis, as well as students with two or three listed handicaps (40 students).

A high school exit exam multiple choice test, more specifically the 1996-1998 South Carolina Basic Skills Assessment Program (BSAP) High School Examination Test of Reading, oral accommodation form, was used as the dependent variable. Items were analyzed to determine what types of errors were associated with the read aloud accommodation form for students with different types of disabilities.

Results indicated that associations exist between disability group and errors made, as well as level of achievement. Overall, it appears that items characteristic of literal comprehension found in specific detail or reference questions, as opposed to inferential comprehension found in main idea questions, appear to have the strongest association with disability status.